


curve, slow; dig, stop

by chewhy



Category: SK8 the Infinity
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Canon, Snowboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28668186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewhy/pseuds/chewhy
Summary: Langa watches the commotion for a second more, frowning as he notices a small kid in a giraffe parka speeding right in front of Reki’s path, and lets out a sigh as he hops up with practiced ease, untucking his fingers as he glides forward.The snow is soft and crunchy under his board. The wind whips against his bare face as he turns sharply to a halt, coming up just in front of Reki and catching him by the elbows.Langa is in Japan to visit family. But he can’t help but want to snowboard, even if it means dealing with strangely chatty, redhaired beginners.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa & Kyan Reki, Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 15
Kudos: 267





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redreki (kirishine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirishine/gifts).



> me watching one episode: u know what this sk8boarding anime needs? more snowboarding
> 
> disclaimer: i do snowboard, i don’t skateboard

Langa wiggles his toes. They barely budge, held tight by the thick layers of socks wedged between them and the walls of his boots. His mother finishes tying them off with one last tug and pats his knee, looking up at him with an exasperated smile. 

“We come all the way to Japan to visit family and all you want to do is snowboarding? You know we can do that just fine in Canada, too?” 

Langa just shrugs, and stomps his feet. “I hate rentals.”

“We couldn’t very well bring your equipment on the plane now, could we?” She switches to Japanese as she flags down one of the attendants to ask something that Langa doesn’t take the time to mentally translate. Turning back to Langa, she pats his head and tells him, “Wait here just one second while I go find some helmets and goggles.” 

He sits there, staring down at his boots as people clomp around him with their heavy boots. The faces and language are unfamiliar to him, but he finds solace in the familiar rustle of ski pants brushing together and boards thwacking against the ground. 

Looking up, he sees a group of kids his age milling around, pushing each other over as they trip in their boots, still unfamiliar with the extra weight on their feet. 

One of them with bright red hair and a ridiculous smile shouts loud enough to reach Langa’s ears as he calls out, “Watch this!” 

Squinting his eyes, Langa watches with a snort as the boy hypes himself up, attracting the attention of all of his friends and a few other onlookers, only to do a pathetic little jump in place that results in an echoing thud as his snowboard flops against the ground. 

“Come  _ on _ , Reki. Obviously you can’t do a kickflip on a snowboard.” 

“Shut up,” the red head, Reki retorts, face now matching his hair. “It’s because we’re inside right now, obviously. Snowboarding and skateboarding are like the same thing. S-boarding, they’re cousins! Brothers, practically.” 

When his friend only rolls his eyes in response, Reki quickly unstraps his boots and lifts up his board, tucking it under his arm to stomp outside. His friends tag behind and their little group stampedes through the waiting area, bumping into Langa on their way out the door. 

Langa sits there for a few more minutes, fidgeting with his zipper absentmindedly until he feels sweat trickling down his neck and sighs, standing up. His mother is still nowhere to be found, but he slips out the door anyway, feeling suffocated under all his layers. 

Outside, the air is crisp and cold, reminding him of home. The snow crunches softly beneath his feet, and though it doesn’t compare to the meters of snowfall they sometimes get back in Canada, Langa can’t help but be drawn out to the top of the slope, staring down at the tiny specks of people scattered across the hill as they zigzag this way and that. 

A familiar flash of red catches his eyes, and he looks over to see that barely half of the group from before have managed to strap their skis and boards on in this whole time, too busy caught up in a snowball fight. 

Keeping one eye out for any stray clumps of snow flung his way, Langa sits down to methodically strap on his boots, frowning when he checks the fit to find it’s just barely wider than his board from home. 

This is why he hates rentals. 

He’s distracted from his work when he hears a loud whistle to his right and looks up to see the redhead has his hands raised as he gets his friends attention. 

“Okay guys, watch me! I’m gonna kill it out here—“

“More like get killed. Get ready to eat dirt, Reki. Or should I say eat snow?”

“Avoid yellow!”

“Don’t you need to stand first to do a kickflip?”

“We solemnly swear to play Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi at your funeral when you inevitably fall down a ditch.”

Some of their comments pass by too quickly for Langa to catch but even he can’t help but crack a small smile at the heckles. 

“Alright, alright,” Reki answers with a laugh, reaching out a hand. “Somebody help me stand already, my butt’s freezing.” 

His friend from earlier tugs him up with ease, and Reki lets out a small whoop, only for it to turn into a yelp as he begins sliding down the hill. 

“Wait, wait, stop! How do I stop, I can’t stop, why is it just sliding on its own? Did somebody push me?” Reki shouts out, but his friends can’t help him as he slips further out of reach. 

Langa watches for a second more, frowning as he notices a small kid in a giraffe parka speeding right in front of Reki’s path, and lets out a sigh as he hops up with practiced ease, untucking his fingers as he glides forward. 

The snow is soft and crunchy under his board. The wind whips against his bare face as he turns sharply to a halt, coming up just in front of Reki and catching him by the elbows. 

“Woah.”

“Shit, that was pretty cool.”

“Reki, betcha you can’t learn to do that by the end of the trip.”

The words flutter too fast by Langa’s brain as he stares into amber eyes which blink owlishly up at him. There’s a small dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, although Langa isn’t entirely sure why he notices it. 

“Uh. Thanks,” Reki stutters out, falling flat onto his ass the minute Langa lets go of him. 

Langa rolls his eyes with a shrug, pointing behind him. 

“Be careful,” he says in rusty Japanese. As good as he is at understanding his grandparents’ chatter, his responses have always been limited to monosyllables when possible. 

Reki’s eyes widen even further as he stares down the slope with a gulp, as if just now realizing how long he would have slid before the hill plateaued out again. “Sorry I—“

Cutting him off, Langa points to the short path he cut from the top of the slope, just a few meters above. He arcs his arm wide, to mimic the motion he took, and then taps his knees with both hands, showing their bend. 

“Curve, slow,” he explains, then points down at the snow at his feet where the edge of his board has dug a little trench, leaving a platform for him to stand on as he continues his explanation. “Dig, stop.” 

“Um,” Reki starts, but before he can finish, Langa lifts his right foot until he’s tilting down the slope, keeping eye contact with Reki until the slow curve he draws has him turned to face the other way. 

After that, well. 

He tries to forget about missing poutine and his dad as he scrapes across the mixture of real and artificial snow, whipping down the slopes until his face is red from cold and exertion, his torso burning up while his ears feel like they’re about to fall off. 


	2. not afraid of falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you can learn a lot on a ski lift. 
> 
> [thanks so much to @oonaisbored for the lovely art!](https://twitter.com/oonaisbored/status/1362080163878621187)

His mother is waiting with her arms crossed and boot tapping at the top of the hill. 

He’d managed to find a lucky lull in the morning crowds of people shoving and jostling their way onto the lift, sitting by himself as he stared down at the mountain, shaking snow off of his board with one foot. 

The serenity he’d felt from earlier fades away as his chair climbs over the hill and he makes out his mother’s angry figure. 

Langa sighs and shifts his weight forward, sliding down and past her only for his mother to grab him by the back of his hood. He falls flat on his ass with a groan and stares up at the blue sky, frowning. 

“I thought I told you to wait, Langa. What if you’d gotten lost?” 

“It’s a ski lodge. There’s only so many opportunities to get lost going up or down a mountain,” he mutters, even as he takes the helmet and goggles off her hands. 

“You shouldn’t have been boarding without a helmet,” she scolds, brushing excess snow off of his jacket. 

“Snow’s not that hard today,” he says, even though he knows she’s right. “I’m gonna go.”

His mother reaches forward to wrap a scarf around his neck when he hops back upright, foot strapped back into his board. 

“I’ll be waiting in the lodge. Come back when you’re hungry – we’ll be meeting your grandparents later for dinner.”

Waving a hand behind him to say goodbye, Langa hops forward until his board is sliding down the slope again. 

Another round, faster this time now that he’s familiar with the scenery. 

Langa bends his knees, shifting his weight onto his left foot until he’s picking up speed, swerving back and forth around clusters of families and little kids that still haven’t learned how to pizza with their skis just right. He gives one of them a little wave as she stares up at him, only to fall flat on her back a second later, still sliding down the hill until her dad catches her sleeve. He laughs, curving away until she’s only a speck in the distance behind him. 

The wind whips past him, blowing any stray strands of hair to the side of his face. With his goggles and scarf on now, only his nose nips in the cold, but he leaves it uncovered to breathe in the crisp, clean scent of new snow. 

The trees blur past and colorful ski pants and parkas turn into streaks of neon light in the corner of his eye until quickly, too quickly, the hill flattens out and he draws wide S’s across the snow, carrying himself just to the entrance of the line for the lift before he’s leaning down to shuck off the straps of his right foot with two quick zips. 

“Woah, are you supposed to take your snowboard off when you get on the lift?” a voice asks from beside him. 

Langa looks up to see red and almost stumbles on the curb of ice that’s built up on either side of the narrow line, barely catching himself by twisting his leg forward. 

The boy from before is standing in front of him, with a ski pole in one hand as he attempts to use it to drag himself forward, both feet still strapped tightly on his board. 

Langa shakes his head, sliding forward on his left foot while he pushes with his right. “Just one foot,” he says, demonstrating. 

Reki watches for a moment, considering, before he’s chucking the ski pole off to the side, shouting, “Oi, Ryuji! You can have this one back.” He reaches down, quickly leaning forward to unstrap one foot only to end up with the buckles caught in his thick winter gloves, tugging uselessly at his boots. 

Rolling his eyes, Langa kneels down and with two quick moves, unbuckles Reki’s foot. “There.”

“Woah, thanks,” Reki says, reaching a hand out to help Langa up. “I’m Reki.”

“Langa,” Langa answers, pulling his hand back out of Reki’s grasp. “You suck at this.”

At that, Reki barks out a loud laugh as they slide forward in line together, inching up closer to the lifts. “Well, yeah. I’m sure you were just a pro since you first stepped on a snowboard, huh?”

Langa shrugs. To be honest, he doesn’t remember. It’s been so long since he first slid down a hill that snowboarding has become more than natural to him, like breathing. He trusts the snow, more than anything else. He’s not afraid to fall, because he knows it’ll be there to catch him. 

He’s not sure that he could explain it well enough in his limited Japanese for Reki to understand. 

He falls silent as they continue to push forward while Reki chatters on beside him, talking about his friends, and falling, and seeing other people fall. Apparently, in the time it took for Reki and his group to make it down the hill once, Langa had made the run twice. 

It isn’t until they’re about to be seated that Langa finally speaks up again, reaching out a hand to grab Reki’s elbow and pull him in closer. “Careful,” he says. “Bend your knees.”

“What–” 

Before Reki has a chance to respond, the ski lift is hitting them and Reki falls back with an oomph as Langa reaches above to pull the bar down over their heads. 

“Didn’t you want to ride with your friends?” Langa asks as they begin to ascend, snowboards bumping occasionally under their feet. 

“Nah. I’d probably just trip over them while getting off,” Reki shrugs, turning around to wave behind him, causing the whole ski lift to shake. 

“Stop that,” Langa hisses, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him to face forward again. “Don’t you know how easy it is to fall?”

Reki stills at that, sitting back in the chair. He bumps his knee against Langa’s, turning to face him with a grin. “It’s okay. I’m not afraid of falling.” His eyes bore into Langa’s with an intensity that can’t be put into words – it’s an expression Langa knows well. One he’s seen reflected on his own. 

Before Langa can answer, Reki’s twisting again, this time to look down as he whistles sharply. “Then again, I haven’t ever fallen from this high before, so that could be pretty bad,” he laughs and the moment is broken. 

They fall back into silence again, and Langa closes his eyes to bask in the warmth of the sun on his face, feeling the slightest breeze push back against them as they move forward. 

“How long have you been doing this, then?” Reki asks from beside him, breaking the tranquility of the moment. 

Langa doesn’t bother to open his eyes as he answers, “Since I was two.”

“Two?” Reki asks incredulously. “Could you even walk when you were two?”

Langa opens his eyes then, blinking away the spots of red that burned into his eyelids from the sun. “My mom does like to say that I could snowboard before I could walk,” he says. “I think that’s an exaggeration, though. Babies can usually start walking before they’re two.”

Reki laughs at that, smacking Langa on the shoulder as he leans forward. “Damn, snowboard sensei. You’re funny, too?”

“That wasn’t a joke,” Langa says, looking down at Reki who continues to laugh. He finds the corners of his lips quirking up anyway as he watches, even though he can’t seem to follow the joke for himself. 

Catching his breath, Reki heaves a sigh as he says, “Man, and here I thought I was something of an expert in my field, too.” 

“Your field?” Langa asks. 

Lifting up his feet, Reki balances his snowboard so his unbuckled foot still brushes against it, giving the illusion of being strapped in. “Skateboarding! There’s no better feeling than flying down a twisting road, no acceleration or braking or steering except your own two feet and a piece of wood on four wheels. Ah,” he sighs, leaning back. “Talking about it makes me miss it.”

“Has it been a while since you last skateboarded?”

“Hmm… Probably at least eighteen hours?” 

“You miss something you did last night,” Langa deadpans. 

“Exactly!” This time, Reki is the one lost on the joke. 

_Then again_ , he thinks as he settles back in the lift chair. _I did take an eighteen hour flight to Japan only to snowboard more._

Reki continues to blabber excitedly beside him, telling him the tricks he’s learned and the friends he’s made over the years as if Langa will be able to differentiate between any of the names he rattles off. Is Casper a person or a trick? Langa sure couldn’t say. 

Still, he watches as Reki talks, nose red and scrunching up when he thinks of a particular victory, or patting at his shoulder as he recalls a nasty injury. 

The sun reflects off his red hair in a way that makes him look so warm and alive compared to the icy cliffs surrounding them that Langa’s tempted for a moment to reach out a hand and touch it. 

The lift comes to a screeching halt all of a sudden, leaving Reki bewildered as he looks around in a panic. 

“Are we stuck? Why aren’t we moving, oh my god, did this break? What’s happening, I’m too young to die, are we going to die here?”

Snorting, Langa bumps Reki’s shoulder with his own to get his attention. “It’s fine, somebody probably fell while getting off so they stopped it. Happens often, especially on green slopes.”

Reki blinks for a moment, face flushing red from more than just cold as he nods. “Right, makes sense. Totally knew that.” As if on cue, the lift creaks again, moving them forward once more. 

They’re nearly to the top, so Langa begins to lift the bar above their heads only for Reki to clutch his arm in panic once again. 

“What the hell are you doing? We could fall,” Reki says, gripping the handlebar tightly. 

With an easy shove, Reki’s gloved hands slip off the cold metal anyway as Langa ignores him, leading Reki to hold onto Langa’s arm instead for support. 

“We’re gonna get off soon,” Langa says slowly as if that explains everything. “Now let go and get ready if you don’t want to be the reason the lift stops again.”

Reki doesn’t bother listening, too busy staring down at the ground far beneath them. 

With a sigh, Langa reaches out and knocks on Reki’s head until he looks up, eyes wide and round. 

“Put your foot on the board, against the back binding.” He lifts his two feet in front of him to demonstrate. Hopefully, Reki is paying attention. “It should be like skateboarding. Easy,” he continues. Beside him, he feels Reki nod, still pressed up into his arm. “And lean forward. Not back. Or you fall. Now jump on three.”

“Wait. What?” Reki says, sitting up a little more as he turns to see they’re reaching the top of the hill. 

“One, two, three!” 

They both jump off, with enough momentum that they’re sliding forward and out of the path of the lift. 

Unfortunately, it seems that Langa forgot to remind Reki of the most important step of dismounting. 

Letting go of his damn arm.

Langa barely makes it two feet forward before he hears a yelp beside him, then a thunk as he feels himself being tugged down as well. They land in a heap of limps, gasping as they struggle to untangle themselves and sit upright again. 

Eventually, Reki gives up and just flops back with a laugh, staring up into the blue sky. Langa stares down at him, considering the way his red hair contrasts against the white snow behind him and finds himself following suit. 

The snow is cold on his back, but Reki radiates warmth beside him. 

“You should teach me how to snowboard,” Reki speaks up after catching his breath.

“No,” Langa answers without bothering to look beside him. “You stick to the bunny slopes. I’m going to black diamond.” 

Langa hasn’t been afraid of falling in a while. But he thinks he might have fallen for something new today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls i love snowboarding so much i miss it :( fuck global warming why wont it snow where i live
> 
> what should i write next lol

**Author's Note:**

> it is 6:25 am. I started watching this anime at 5:09 am. Also i wrote this on my phone and discovered moments before posting that i spelled langa’s name wrong so aplogies if i missed any corrections. If u see a stray lango, let me know
> 
> find me on [[twitter (ch3w2)](https://twitter.com/ch3w2)] and [[tumblr (ch3w2)](http://ch3w2.tumblr.com/)]!  
>  **kudos and comments always appreciated**
> 
> my carrd is [ch3w2.carrd.co](https://ch3w2.carrd.co/) for more information about requests


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